Field of the Invention
Presently, electronic cameras, whether still or motion, have balance settings for setting colour quality. In the better cameras, the balance setting, which is commonly referred to as a white balance setting, can be adjusted manually. The camera user adjusts the setting by directing the lens at a white surface and changing the setting in accordance with the characteristics of the white surface.
The problem with the prior art is that there has not been any readily available standardized reference device which can easily be transported and which can be used by camera operators for accurately setting the colour balance in different locations. The practice has been to use whatever object is near the user, and this means that objects such as sheets of white paper, a colleague's shirt, a white vehicle or whatever other imprecisely-colored object at hand is often used. The problem with choosing reference objects on the basis of what is at hand is that the colour quality of those objects differs vastly and, the colour quality of the resulting work can be inconsistent and less than optimum.
In the case of laboratory spectrophotometry, barium sulphate and magnesium oxide are often used as standard reference whites, but they are expensive, easily damaged and impractical for use in a television or film production environment.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of making a reference device and a reference device with a specified colour biased surface for accurately and consistently setting the colour balance of a camera to that specific colour bias.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a reference device and a method of making a reference device with a neutral white surface for accurately and consistently setting the white balance of a camera.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a reference device and a method of making a reference device with a colour biased surface of particular quality.